latin america

March 22, 2010 -- The free, sovereign and independent
homeland of our dreams will only come true if we radicalise the process
and speed up the transition to socialism”, Venezuela's President Hugo
Chavez wrote in his March 14 weekly column “Chavez Lines”.

The Venezuelan government has launched a number of initiatives in recent
weeks aimed to tackle threats to the revolutionary process — including
from elements within the pro-Chavez camp that seek to undermine plans to
deepen the revolution.

Central to this are new measures aimed at speeding up the transfer of
power to organised communities.

Chavez wrote in his February 21 column: “The time has come for
communities to assume the powers of state, which will lead
administratively to the total transformation of the Venezuelan state and
socially to the real exercise of sovereignty by society through
communal powers.”

Participatory democracy

The previous day, Chavez announced the creation of the federal
government council in front of thousands of armed peasants that are part
of the newly created peasant battalions in the Bolivarian militia.

March 23, 2010 -- As Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution enters a new
decade of struggle and defiantly advances towards its goal of “21st century socialism”,
serious challenges to the future of the process emerging from both inside and
outside the country still abound. As a result, key questions surrounding
Venezuela's mounting tensions with the West, the role played by its fiery and
outspoken leader Hugo Chavez and the future of the process itself remain as
relevant today as ever before. Australian-based journalists and long-time
Venezuela solidarity activists Federico
Fuentes and Kiraz Janicke have
been carefully following Venezuela's ongoing political transformation for
several years now, countering mainstream media spin and providing invaluable
on-the-ground coverage and analysis about the process as it unfolds. I had the
fortunate opportunity to sit down and speak with them in Toronto before they returned
to Caracas, following a 10-day solidarity tour of Canada.

Caracas, March 8, 2010 (ABN/Venezuelanalysis.com) – “I’m a woman with a new life since the
Bolivarian Revolution knocked on my door”, said Pielrroc Montenegro,
Maracaiban[i] by birth and Andean by
tradition, with eyes full of nostalgia and gratitude. She described herself as a “dignified mother of the neighbourhood”
since the mission of that name[ii]
enabled her to realise one of
her dreams: enrol in university.

Years ago, Pielrroc didn’t think much of it when, barely aware of its
existence, she signed up with Mission Ribas [high school-level
education program]. When she was young she had been forced to leave high
school just one year before finishing it.

Bolivia's new justice minister Nilda Copa, one of the 10 women among the country's 20 government ministers.

By Lisa Macdonald

March 3, 2010 -- In January,
Bolivia’s left-wing President Evo Morales began his second term by
appointing a new cabinet in which women are equally represented for the
first time. Morales, Bolivia’s first president from the nation’s long-oppressed Indigenous majority, is leading a revolutionary process of
transformation. The 10 women ministers are from a wide range of backgrounds, and three
of them are Indigenous.

Introducing the new ministers, Morales said: “My
great dream has come true — half the cabinet seats are held by women. This is a homage to my mother, my sister and my daughter.”

In the December 6, 2010, national elections, in which there was the
highest-ever voter participation in Bolivia, Morales and his Movement towards
Socialism (MAS) party won a resounding victory. Morales was re-elected
with a record 64.2% of the vote and the MAS secured the two-thirds
majority in the Senate needed to pass legislation to advance its
pro-people program.

March 4, 2010 -- On
February 23, 2010, Cuban inmate Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after 83
days on hunger strike. He was 42. This is the first such incident in Cuba since
inmate Pedro Luis Boitel died in 1972 under similar conditions. The
corporate media put the tragic incident on front pages and
emphasised the plight of Cuban prisoners.[1]

Zapata's
dramatic exit sparked a justifiable global uproar. The Cuban prisoner's
case undeniably fosters sympathy and a sense of solidarity with a
person who expressed his despair and malaise in prison, carrying out his
hunger strike to the ultimate consequence. The heartfelt emotion
aroused by his case is quite respectable. In contrast, the manipulation
of Tamayo's death and of the grief of his family and friends by the
corporate media for political purposes violates the basic principles of
journalistic ethics.

How was the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund formed, and how connected is the HERF to ordinary people in Haiti?

The
Haiti Emergency Relief Fund (HERF) was formed shortly after the
February 29, 2004, coup e'tat as an offshoot of our partner organisation
Haiti Action Committee (both based in the San Franscisco Bay Area),
which does political advocacy and consciousness raising about Haiti and
has long-term relationships with several grassroots leaders in the
Lavalas movement that represents the vast majority of Haiti's
population.

Monthly Review -- “When Chávez speaks, we listen. But we don’t listen to those around
him.” This comment by a community activist interviewed by Iain Bruce,
and integrated into his wonderful exploration of the Bolivarian
Revolution from below, points to an essential characteristic—the unique
link at present (por ahora) between Hugo Chávez and the exploited and
excluded of Venezuela.

February 24, 2010 -- For
environmentalists, Indigenous rights activists, feminists, socialists
and all progressive people, Latin America is a source of hope and
inspiration today. The people of Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and
El Salvador, among others, are showing that radical social change is
possible and a better, more just society can be imagined and built.

The tide of rebellion and revolution now sweeping Latin America is
posing a serious challenge to imperialism’s brutal global rule. For
anyone who wants an end to war, exploitation and oppression, Latin
America’s struggles to create alternatives are crucially important.

Australia's leading socialist newspaper Green Left Weekly is strongly committed to supporting the growing “people’s power” movement in Latin America. We are proud of the fact that GLW
is the only Australian newspaper to have a permanent bureau in Latin
America, based in Caracas, Venezuela. Through our weekly articles on
developments in the region, GLW strives to counter the corporate media’s many lies about Latin
America’s revolutions, and to give a voice in English to the people’s
movements for change.

Two
Caracas-based activists, Federico Fuentes and Kiraz Janicke, will speak
in Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa, Montreal, Victoria and Vancouver between
February 26 and March 7, in a tour organised by the Centre for Social
Justice and the Venezuela We Are with You Coalition in Toronto.

Their tour takes place at a decisive turning point in the Venezuelan
revolutionary process, as US-backed rightist forces escalate attacks
on the movement of working people and the Bolivarian government.

During the eleven years since Hugo Chavez was elected as president
of Venezuela, his country has become a focus of hope on a world scale.
At the Copenhagen climate conference, Venezuela helped lead the
countries calling for international social and ecological justice.

February 20, 2010 -- Decisive battles between the forces of revolution and counter-revolution loom on the horizon in Venezuela. The campaign for the September 26, 2010, National Assembly elections will be a
crucial battle between the supporters of socialist President Hugo
Chavez and the US-backed right-wing opposition. But these battles, part of the class struggle between the poor majority
and the capitalist elite, will be fought more in the streets than at
the ballot box.

So far this year, there has been an escalation of demonstrations by violent opposition student groups; the continued
selective assassination of trade union and peasant leaders by right-wing
paramilitaries; and an intensified private media campaign presenting a
picture of a debilitated government in crisis — and on its way out.

February 19, 2010 -- Correo del
Orinoco -- In Venezuela,
people know what the 3Rs stand for: revise, rectify and re-impulse. Like Karl Marx,
who stressed that the revolution advances by criticising itself, President Hugo
Chavez has argued that it is necessary to recognise errors and to go beyond
them in order to advance.

“The 1980s were characterised by a wave of violence in several
countries in Latin America. Our country, Honduras, was not an
exception. Even though the phenomenon of ‘disappearances’ occurred
mostly during the military dictatorships, many people also vanished
during democratically elected governments.”[1]

Eric
Toussaint interviewed by Igor Ojeda for the Brazilian weekly paper Brasil de Fato.Translated
from French by Judith Harris and Christine Pagnoulle.

February 2010 -- According to Eric Toussaint, a doctor in political science and one of
the ideologists of the World Social Forum, now in its tenth edition, effective
political action calls for the creation of a permanent national front of
parties, social movements and international networks.

Eric Toussaint, a doctor in political science and a
member of the International Council of the World Social Forum (WSF), is in
favour of the WSF becoming a platform of greater political influence in social
struggles throughout the world. He is not particularly worried about the
resistance of certain sectors within the forum who would prefer this event to
retain its original form. For him, the solution is simple. “If the World Social
Forum cannot accommodate it, we must build another instrument, without leaving
or scrapping the forum”.